I can't tell you how to pronounce Nogales or Vincennes, but if Indiana is anything like Ohio, it may be painfully literal … I lived in OH for a few years back in the late 80s/early 90s, and I'm STILL not over the town of Versailles. "Vur-sails."

I'm not from Vincennes, but from the other side of the IL/IN border, several counties up. Given the way Midwestern cities mangle French, I'm going to go with Vin-SENZ.

In my home county, there's a town called Bourbonnais (Bur-bun-AY) that got mangled into Bur-BONE-is. My parents always said you could tell the old-timers from the newcomers by how people pronounced it. (The old-timers, of course, did the mangling.)

Oddly, I wouldn't have identified Noork/Newark as being a PA thing, though; I'm a Philly girl, but I got it from my parents, who are Bergen Co. born and raised.

Wilkes-Barre, though…I only learned it was pronounced "Wilkesbury" from hearing Harry Kalas discuss minor league games back before the Phillies let Scranton/Wilkes-Barre fall into the hands of the Yankees.

Hee! Sars, your family's spot-on. That difference in LANK-uh-ster versus LAN-caster is how you tell the natives from the tourists–at least according to my husband's family.

Most embarrassing pronunciation in the Pittsburgh area? North Versailles is not North Ver-sigh, it's . . . North Ver-SALES. I never thought anything of it, since it was up the road from where I grew up, but it strikes folks with any French at all as utterly hysterical.

When I lived in Pennsylvania, most of the people I worked with pronounced it "Wilkesbree" or "Wilkesberry," but on the radio, or the news up there, you'd definitely hear Wilkes-Bar, though, too, so I have no idea what the proper pronounciation is. We have a town in Massachusetts, Barre, which we say "Barry," so the whole thing is a total mystery to me. As to which syllable gets the accent… I think it's the first? As if you are treating the "Barre" part like the English placename suffix "bury"? But my recollection is that for people who say "Bar" or "Bur" it's much harder to tell which gets the accent, because they're almost separate words, at that point. I think. By far, not the weirdest place name or pronounciation in PA, that's for sure.

This is fun, because as a Central PA native, I can always tell who else is from the way they say Lancaster. We're the only ones who say it like that, all the other Lancasters are pronounced in a more… standard way.

Like Maggiecat from the last pronunciation thread, I'm from Ahia ("Ohio" to lay people).

We say:

-Lima (like the bean)
-Medina ("muh-DINE-ah")
-Mantua ("man-away," if you say it like the rest of the world does we have no idea where you're talking about… really. no idea.)
-Findlay ("finlee")
-Mentor ("menner")
-Solon (like "colon" but my friend who recently moved here from MN thought it should be pronounced like "cologne" or "salon" based on the way it's spelled… maybe it's her?)
-Cuyahoga (should be pronounced "ky-uh-HOE-guh" but for some reason we all say "cuh-HAWG-uh," although admittedly "cuyahoga" is not really a univerally known word)
-Tuscarawas (the correct way to say it is "tusk-a-RAW-us," but invariably people "tusker-werrus," some other garbled mess. also, ditto this not being a very commonplace word)

My BF is from SC and is consistently flummoxed by the regional dialect and pronunciation of place names. This from a southerner :P

I personally love the millions of weirdly named tiny burgs in PA, and "Pittsburghese" is one of my favorite regional dialects… it just amuses me!

In Manhattan, is it true that Houston is pronounced "How-ston?" I remember someone telling me that once when they were explaining SoHo.

Ayup. That's actually the quickest way to get directions if you're lost on the subway: Mention "Hew-ston Street" aloud, and ten locals will immediately correct you (politely), then get you wherever you're going to demonstrate how well they know the city.

I only learned the wilkes-barre thing when I went to school in Philadelphia. My other favorite PA spelling/pronunciation wonder? The Schuykill river (pronounced "SKOOL-Kill"). Recently I was watching some TV show/movie that was supposed to take place in philly, and they pronounced the w-b the wrong way. it made me a little mad.

But my favorite pronunciation ever is Chili, NY (near Rochester). A friend from college grew up there, and it was very important to explain that it was pronounced "CHY-lie", and not like the bad chain "mexican" restaurant..

In New Mexico, where everyone speaks Spanish, we say "No-GAL-es". But then, our town of Madrid is pronounced "MA-drid," so go figure! (And if you're wondering, the town of Truth or Consequences is pronounced "T-'r-C." :)

@lauren: Thanks! Every time I've needed directions in "the City," New Yorkers have been insanely nice and helpful…almost like it's a citywide competition to disprove the reputation :) Contrast that to D.C., where we all grumpily stare at the tourists on the metro every morning who have the nerve to TALK while we're reading our newspapers on the way to our very important jobs…

Also, for those who care, Thomas Jefferson's home is MontiCHello, not MontiSello.

We have a town here in Oregon named Aloha. But rather than the lovely lilting Hawaiian pronunciation you'd assume it comes from, it's pronounced "A-LO-uh." No "h." You really lose a lot when you lose the "h."

I grew up north of Scranton calling it WILKES-berry, though I did hear "WILKES-bar" on the radio from time to time. No consensus, then, though I did hear more of the former. 'Course, plenty of people around there also dropped the "t" out of Scranton.

Giving directions in Philadelphia is a riot. Though I pronounce Schuylkill "SKOO-kull", no initial "L". "Take the SKOO-kull to the Blue Route" — say what?! You're not gonna find either of those roads listed on the map!

The one bit of Philadelphia accent I've retained from my years near the city is, amusingly, the pronunciation of Philadelphia. Phi-uh-de-phia, more or less. I blame my sister for bringing home that gem.

Y'all need to wander around Canada for a bit. We have the whole range. In the prairies, the towns names are easy to pronounce but ridiculous [ as in Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump in Alberta and Ebb and Flow in Manitoba].

In Quebec… no idea. Only French speaking people pronounce Montreal correctly, anyway. Anyone else who tries just sounds pretentious.

But the Maritimes? They have Disneyland names out there. Antigonish, Truro, Gaff Topsails.

@sam: Slightly off-topic, but you got me started: The lack of (simple!) research that goes into even high-budget tv shows and movies always astounds me. I recently saw 3:10 to Yuma and was driven nearly to distraction by the "Bisbee" they portrayed at the beginning. Bisbee is (a) up in the mountains (b) a mining town and (c) at that time was the biggest metropolis between the Mississippi and San Francisco–it housed the stock exchange for the West, etc. But what did it look like in the movie? Well, it looked a lot more like Tombstone–some tiny dusty cowtown on a plain. I'm sorry, but would it really be that hard either to portray it properly or just use a different name? Even make up a name? It's not like there was any reason it had to be Bisbee. ARGH.

Oh, and yes, it's No-GA-liss/No-GAH-less/No-GAH-lace etc. Anything approximating that is perfectly acceptable, depending on how much spanish you're trying to sound like you know.